1.
Few of the routines like daily journal and walk/run got broken with the travel and recovery. It is a difficult time of the year, with the oppressive heat, uncertainty introduced by a confusing economic situation, many challenges for the people around me and some degradation of relationships and structures. I am planning to take a week off to rest, reset and hope to get back with more clarity and rhythm.
2.
Finished 7th book this year - Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. This was a different premise that I had never come across before - the world of game designers and developers. I didn’t have a computer during school and college, but had played games like road rash, doom and few such varieties of shooter, racing and such. But did not get hooked further, never owned a Wii or Playstation or Xbox. But had seen glimpses of the sophistication of newer games, parallel worlds of people and cultures of gamers. I have followed one of the legends in game development - John Carmack - for some years. This book follows a boy and a girl, both nerds, who met at the age of twelve or thirteen and follows their life and career till their forties. Korean, Japanese, American - a mix of cultural elements too. It is their story of creating games, building a company, about how people change with situations that they never might have imagined when they make childhood promises, while still some of the core remains the same.
Story had a couple of pivot points where the main protagonists drift apart and then come back together again. It made me wish the misunderstandings between people are not based on silly premises. Since we get only this one life, why would we not fight harder to mend broken relationships. If it is broken, it should be because of deeper or meatier issues, but guess it is not often so. There were passages, especially in the stages of the story where they were figuring each other out, that I felt were beautiful - like fiction revealing the truths about the human condition. It dragged towards the end, like many good things where the creators struggle to figure out how to end it. Highly recommend this one though - for the unique characters, for the unique premise and some introspection about relationships.
3.
Watched two movies. October (Hindi) - picked this up since I saw someone recommend that this was a poetic film, but didn’t resonate with me. Felt contrived, forced, not serious enough to explore the complexity of characters going through traumatic life experiences.
No way out (English) - rewatch, since I didn’t remember watching this at all earlier. Kevin Costner in his young days and Gene Hackman - it was like a pulp fiction watch, the likes which one can use to defuse some tension.
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